Friday, March 22, 2013

Record Low Scoring?

In 1989, the average score in the Round of 64 was 77.86. In 2013, on the first day of the Round of 64 finished, only 5 of the 32 teams scored more than that:

VCU 88

Colorado State 84

Arizona 81

Syracuse 81

Louisville 79

Last year (2012), the average score in the Round of 64 was 66.375 which tied for the lowest in the shot-clock era. Halfway through the round in 2013, the average is 62.56 which is almost 4 points lower than the LOWEST average score.

To not break the record, the 32 teams on Friday will need to average 70.2 points per game. To illustrate how unlikely that is to happen, only 8 (or 25%) of the today's teams even scored 70 points.

To illustrate how historically bad the scoring has been, I decided to go back and look at the average score for each tournament. From 1939 to 1952, the highest average score was 65.1. In 1953, the average score jumped to 71.5 and most of the scores were more in line with the long-term scores:

Since 1953, here are the 10 lowest scoring years in the tournament (counting the 20 games so far this year):

Year

Avg Score

1983

62.63725

2013

63.55

1985

63.69048

1982

65.54255

1981

66.35417

1984

66.39423

2012

66.46269

1967

67.48148

2000

67.52381

1954

67.53571

The 5 years before the shot clock was instituted were very low scoring. This was one of the reasons why the shot-clock was introduced. The scoring in the tournament this year is the second lowest since 1953 with only 1983 lower.